Sometimes Desmond
by wearwind
Summary: He is not only an observer. He is all of them - feels, remembers, misses. And it does not fade when he returns to his own mind. One-shot, Desmond-centered, taking place outside the Animus during AC:Brotherhood.


_Taking place in between of the main missions in AC: Brotherhood. Warning, spoilers ahead!_

Sometimes Desmond feels too crowded in the hallucinating, scarred head of his. There's not one, but three men in there; three different perspectives, thoughts, memories, and he had seen and understood all of them. He _was _all of them. During their nights at Monteriggioni, when he wakes up through the blinding light of the Animus, for the sake of Lucy he shrugs it off and tells himself: _I'm Desmond Miles, I'm twenty four years old, I'm American, I'm doing it so the world can have a chance at not being destroyed._ But then Lucy disappears to sleep and his outer shell of contemporariness shatters to pieces; he is not _only _Desmond, he is not _only _American, and during the past year he used to be both more and less than twenty four. He knows the weary feeling of limbs slowly losing their nimbleness; he experienced the bitter acceptance coming with the first gray hair on his temple. And yet he knows and loves the dexterity and excitement of youth; he remembers how beautiful was the full moon over Florence, how thrilling was to know that the world is unravelling at his will and he is young, his body strong, and his mind eager to plummet right into the brand new everything as he was running free on the moon-drenched rooftops, higher, higher still, _I'm Ezio, Ezio Auditore da Firenze! _Leap – _leap of faith – _he doesn't yet know what to have faith in, but he believes in his arms and legs to hold him, his blade to defend him, his mouth to sing, scream and kiss. He's Ezio from Florence, a young, careless assassin, and he mourns his father in the long hours when sun shines over Monteriggioni and his team lay in restless sleep. He's also Ezio from Rome, _il Mentore, _the founder and the master of his white-robed Brotherhood, quiet, deadly veteran. And then he's Altair, he's missing one finger, his skin is tanned from the Eastern sun and although he knows killing Al-Mualim was the only way to end the madness, he still regrets it.

He can feel it; he cannot _not _feel it and that is not the same thing. Deep in the night, as he lays mute and immobile, gripping his teeth in vain effort to keep his composure, he remembers those who he had never met and he will nevermore: young and innocent Leonardo, with his contagious smile and eagerness to throw himself into depths of undiscovered sciences; old and scarred, but still brawny Mario; Claudia, at first shallow and vain, then growing up like a true Auditore. He misses them, misses them with his eyes squeezed shut and painfully clenched fists, refusing to make any sound under the hollow ceiling of the cave. Because they're dead for half a millennium and yet he still considers them his family.

Although his contemporary part – his _sane _part – keeps telling him they're only memories from a life that was not his, that is not the way it feels. He never considered himself particularly normal, but now, he thinks, missing the people dead for five centuries has been this one step over the line.

He still feels a sharp sting of pain and regret when he remembers Catarina's face, calm and determined as she bid him goodbye on the streets of Rome. A mixture of different feelings towards Claudia; protectiveness, fear, reluctance, finally pride. Every time he recalls another face, another name, hears a phantom echo of a voice in his head – _La Volpe, Machiavelli, Federico, Mother, Cristina –_ his stomach clenches painfully and he has to wake up, run away, _do something, _because ghosts of the past that never was make the ache unbearable and he _will _go insane if he doesn't escape.

So he does – he storms out of the cave, where a giant statue of _himself _watches his every move, and runs through the moon-drenched rooftops of Monteriggioni until his breath changes into harsh, desperate panting and every muscle turns into a blazing knob of pain. But seeing the town doesn't help. It only further twists his guts in an odd, unfamiliar, painful feeling of loss and betrayal. _This is what has become of my land? My villa? My heritage?_

He knows different Monteriggioni, Monteriggioni from the dusk of fifteen century. The little shops he used to invest in are long gone; the barracks are transformed into a social service building. The city walls, the ones he remembered crumbling under his feet during the Borgia siege, are now purely decorative; there's a fence on them and a set of auxiliary nets here and there. The walls, as well as the villa, are aged and in bad shape.

The electrical network wires cover the brick buildings; on the streets that he used to ride on horseback there are cars and bikes now. He feels irrational anger looking at them; how dare they invade the space of the past?! He is sick, almost dizzy with illogical emotions, overwhelmed like a real time traveller from the past who treads over his own home and sees what's become of it. _It's wrong. It's wrong. It's just so fucking wrong._

A part of his brain keeps repeating that this is the world he lived in all his life; that there's nothing improper in cars on the street, that Shaun has told him that change is vital for development; that he is Desmond Miles, a barman from New York and this is reality. But at the same time he can feel the scar on his mouth, where a stone from fifteen-century Florence ripped his skin. He remembers. He remembers. _He remembers. _

So when the One Who Came Before steps out of his body, leaving him only with Lucy's blood on his hidden blade and his own broken, shattered, torn mind, he welcomes the blackness with relief. He lets the walls between his memories crumble. Now he is them all – or maybe they all are him? Are they? Is he a sum of their thoughts, deeds and emotions? Is he an heir of them all? Is he?

No, not an heir. A vessel, thin and vulnerable within its own structure, but one that will contain it all. The wisdom and sorrow of Altair; the fulfilled revenge of Ezio and his quest for truth; then he can see the glimpses of other faces, hear the distant screams and war cries, feel the salt of the sea on his lips – love – fear – hidden blade plunging into the chests of traitors – _millennia, millennia of chase – _

He collapses, and in his fall are all the leaps of faith his ancestors ever dared.

_Is he just a sum of all them?_

_Or does a sum mean more than just all of the elements combined? _


End file.
